Thursday, March 28, 2013

Factoring Song

I've got an NBA-themed article in the works, but decided to postpone finishing it in order to work on my latest Silly Math Song.

FACTORING SONG: FACTOR GANGNAM STYLE teaches the basics of factoring, as well as reducing fractions that contain polynomials.

The information is pretty rapid-fire as the song covers all of these types of factoring:

Factoring out the GCF
Factoring the Difference of Squares
Factoring Quadratic Trinomials with a Leading Coefficient of 1
Factoring by Grouping
Factoring the Sum and Difference of Cubes
Factoring General Quadratic Trinomials (ax^2 + bx + c)

It's interesting to note that the vast majority of quadratic expressions are not factorable - but factoring is such a great exercise in mathematical logic, and has been part of the core Algebra curriculum for years.